tees many interests and assurances of both internal and external close alliance. But they do not know that the English race is in itself thoroughly aristocratic, that it only demands liberty in the most narrow-minded manner or sense of a small corporation—that is, liberties legally secured by documents—and that the French freedom for all mankind, in which the whole world shall share according to the charter of reason, is to its deepest depth utterly detested by the English. They only know an English freedom—one historically English, patented for the use of royal Great Britannic subjects, or based on some old law—let us say of the time of Queen Anne. Burke, who wished to burke souls,[1] and traded life itself to the anatomy of history, chiefly reproached the French Revolution because it was not formed, like the English, on old institutions, and he cannot comprehend that a state could exist without nobility. But England's nobility is altogether different from the French noblesse, and deserves that I here award it the most distinctive praise. English nobility has always opposed the absolutism of its kings, in common cause with the
- ↑ "A play of words," says the German editor, "on that other Burke, who committed murder to provide anatomical lecturers with corpses, and caused in all England a panic-fear of being 'burked,' as it was called at the time."
